Pochette officielle de la compilation - MCA Records
The Smashing Pumpkins have joined the already long list of artists gathered for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album), the soundtrack for the franchise’s upcoming instalment. Their song, titled ‘Black Stars’, arrived alongside its official video, and marks a small milestone in the band’s history: it’s the first time since the Siamese Dream sessions, back in the early 1990s, that Billy Corgan has worked with producer Butch Vig.
A symbolic reunion with Butch Vig
The relationship between the Chicago band and Butch Vig goes back decades: he shaped the sound of Gish and then Siamese Dream, the two albums that launched the Smashing Pumpkins before Corgan took over production duties himself for the rest of the catalogue. Asked to contribute a track to the compilation while Corgan was working on a solo project, the band chose to bring Vig back in rather than produce the song alone. With the current line-up of Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin, ‘Black Stars’ plays like a bridge between two eras of the band: the polished production of their early work and the darker songwriting of their more recent years.
A compilation built at franchise scale
The album brings together twenty-nine artists from very different genres under producer Dave Cobb, timed to the film’s theatrical release on November 20. The first single, Noah Kahan’s ‘Draw You Out’, opened the rollout in early October; ‘Black Stars’ closes out the first disc of the double compilation, built as a standalone record rather than a simple collection of leftover material. Pairing a veteran alt-rock act with younger pop and folk artists sums up the bet behind the soundtrack: speak to several generations of moviegoers at once, instead of only courting listeners already invested in the franchise.
A video shot in the dark
The video that accompanies the release stays close to the band’s usual imagery: harsh lighting, tight shots on Corgan’s face, a tense mood that owes far more to the Smashing Pumpkins’ own gothic-rock aesthetic than to the young-adult world of the film. Few details tie it directly to the plot of Sunrise on the Reaping, which isn’t unusual: most contributions to this kind of soundtrack are built first as standalone songs, before being placed into the film’s edit later on.
What comes next
The full album is due November 13, a week ahead of the film, released on MCA Records with several collector vinyl pressings alongside digital and CD formats. For the Smashing Pumpkins, this Butch Vig-produced detour doesn’t necessarily signal a full studio reunion for a new band album: for now, it remains a one-off tied to a film franchise rather than an artistic turn. It does confirm, though, that the band is still sought out for this kind of collective project, well past its 1990s peak.
A franchise built on event soundtracks
The Hunger Games series has always treated its soundtracks as genuine musical events rather than simple tie-in products: the first film paired Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars on ‘Safe & Sound’, while Lorde wrote and curated the companion album to Mockingjay – Part 1, anchored by her song ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’. Handing a track to a band as recognisable as the Smashing Pumpkins fits that same logic: use a theatrical release to put veteran artists back in the spotlight, while widening the franchise’s audience beyond its usual fanbase. For a band with more than thirty years behind it, this kind of placement is also a way to reach listeners who weren’t even born when Siamese Dream came out, through the streaming platforms and social feeds that now ride alongside any blockbuster release.
